Stefan Vogt, ANL
Hard X-ray microscopy is particularly well suited to characterizing materials across numerous lengthscales. Recent advances in detector technologies, as well as methods, have vastly increased the ability of scanning probes to acquire large field of views at simultaneously high spatial resolution. Synchrotron generated hard x-ray provide the penetration to probe comparatively ‘thick’ samples, the brightness to achieve high intensity focus spots, and the energy to generate characteristic x-rays up to 10s of keV. These instruments have the ability to image metals (even in trace quantities), and probe their chemical state at spatial resolutions down to 10s of nm. In combination with diffraction detection, one can map stress and strain in larger samples as well as individual nanocrystals. Using lensless imaging approaches (for example, ptychography), one can significantly extend the achievable spatial resolution well beyond x-ray optics limitations.
Advances in instrumentation, such as faster detectors, better optics, and improved data acquisition strategies are fundamentally changing the way experiments are carried out, giving us the ability to more completely interrogate samples, at higher spatial resolution, across multiple lengthscales, with higher throughput, better sensitivity and using multimodal detection schemes. But a very significant challenge remains: the next generation of data analysis and visualization tools for multidimensional microscopy that not only can ‘deal with’ the ever-increasing data volumes, but can interpret data, identify and classify objects within datasets, visualize trends across datasets and instruments, and ultimately enable researchers to reason with abstraction of data instead of just with images.
We will highlight some of these challenges in the context of existing experiments, and also discuss challenges and opportunities in the context of emerging possibilities with the next generation of synchrotron light sources. These have the potential to revolutionize hard x-ray science, with several orders of magnitude increased brightness and coherent flux. This directly translates into vastly improved experimental capabilities, and orders of magnitude increased data volumes.
Speaker Bio. Stefan Vogt is Associate Division Director in the X-ray Science Division at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, the APS’s Principal Science Advisor to the APS-upgrade, and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. He has been an influential driver in developing X-ray fluorescence microscopy, and his key interests lie in hard X-ray microscopy with a focus on methods development as well as the role of trace metals in biology and life sciences. He is deeply involved in hardware, software and methods development related to Synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence element mapping and quantification, and has developed and optimized instrumentation for biomedical applications of X-ray microscopy, and in particular trace elemental analysis. He has spearheaded the development of relevant, complementary techniques, such as quantitative differential phase contrast for hard X-ray microscopy. In collaborative studies he has applied this exciting technology to numerous experiments across different fields.